Wanted Woman Page 9

  Desiree, too. Hadn’t Jesse always suspected as much? Wasn’t that why he’d never taken her up on her many offers? Why he’d felt brotherly toward her?

  Well, he didn’t feel that way toward Maggie.

  “Didn’t you ever bother to ask Daisy?” he demanded.

  His father looked up at him. “She went back to Wade for a while and swore that Desiree was his.”

  “And Angela?”

  “We never spoke about Angela.”

  Jesse cursed under his breath. “When did Daisy break it off?”

  His father seemed surprised by the question. “Daisy didn’t. I did.”

  So that’s how it had gone down. Mitch told him not long ago that Daisy had said she loved their father. Did she still? “When was that?”

  “Before I knew she was pregnant,” he said and looked out across the dense forest that stretched in front of his place. “I couldn’t keep having an affair, not while I was married to your mother. I knew it was wrong but Daisy and I— I suppose that’s why Daisy never told me she was pregnant. I didn’t talk to her again until—”

  “Until my mother left,” Jesse guessed. “Daisy must have called you to tell you that your wife had been up to the house demanding blackmail money.”

  Lee closed his eyes again in silent acknowledgement.

  “That’s when you changed your mind and gave her the money to leave,” Jesse said, seeing now how it had happened. His mother had never loved his father. As far back as he could remember, Jesse knew she wanted to leave the three of them, had just waited for her husband to grant her a divorce—and pay her off.

  His father said nothing. What could he say about a woman who was that desperate to abandon her two sons and husband and had been long before her husband had taken up with Daisy Dennison.

  “Why did Daisy tell you about mother going up there?” Wasn’t it obvious? “She wanted you to face how badly my mother wanted to leave, didn’t she?”

  He opened his eyes. “Ruth was a good woman—”

  “Don’t even try to sell me on her, okay?”

  Lee looked down at his boots. All these years he’d tried to spare Jesse and Mitch, pretending their mother had wanted them, just couldn’t handle marriage to him, always blaming himself and making excuses for her.

  “Did Daisy hope you two would resume your affair after that?” Jesse asked.

  A few minutes stretched past. “Daisy wanted more than I could offer her then.”

  That surprised Jesse. Was it possible his dad had been serious about Daisy?

  “Whatever Daisy was thinking, Angela’s kidnapping changed everything for her,” Lee Tanner continued, turning to look at Jesse. “If this woman really is Angela…”

  Jesse nodded. “It could open up a can of worms that will make everything else pale by comparison.”

  They fell into a deep silence again.

  Jesse reached into his jacket pocket and handed his father the DNA test. “I need this now.”

  He nodded, went into the house and returned a few minutes later. He handed his son the boxed up test. It was hard to tell what his father was thinking, let alone feeling at that moment.

  “If I’m right, a lot more than dirty laundry is going to come out,” Jesse said. “There’s been some deaths back in the city where she’s been living.”

  His father’s eyes widened. “You don’t think she—”

  “No. She isn’t a killer.” How did he know that? He just did. Just like he knew she was Angela Dennison. “I’m afraid she’s in trouble.” Hell, he knew she was in trouble—that saddlebag full of money, the APB out on her. He just didn’t know how much.

  He looked over at his father, saving the worst for last. “Dad, I need to know where my mother is.”

  Lee reared back as if he’d been punched. “Why would you—”

  “Do you know where she is?” Jesse watched his father’s face. “You do.” Jesse groaned. “You’ve been sending her money all these years.” He couldn’t believe it.

  “You’re wrong. But I would have if she’d asked. She’s your mother.”

  “She was never a mother to Mitch and me and you know it.”

  “She brought you into this world,” Lee said. “For that, I owe her. And so do you.”

  Jesse gritted his teeth. “Where is she?”

  “You’re asking as a deputy now, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. She could be a material witness in the kidnapping. She was at the Dennison house just before Angela disappeared and she was never questioned because she skipped town that same day.” Jesse narrowed his eyes at his father. “Don’t tell me you haven’t wondered if she had something to do with Daisy Dennison’s baby disappearing.”

  He expected his father to argue that Ruth Anne Tanner would never steal the woman’s baby to get back at her because of the affair. He didn’t. Couldn’t. Even if Ruth hadn’t given a damn about her husband, she had tried to blackmail Daisy. When Daisy threw her out without a cent, Ruth might have decided to get even and they both knew it.

  “I don’t know where she is,” Lee said, his voice sounding hoarse. “My only connection to her is through my attorney and hers.”

  “Your attorney still Matthew Brooks?”

  His father nodded with obvious reluctance. “Jesse, please don’t go see her. No good can come of it.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Jesse said, hearing the fear in his father’s voice. Like Jesse, he must fear his former wife had kidnapped Angela and involved Bud Farnsworth out of vengeance?

  Or maybe for money. It seemed Maggie had ended up with wealthy adoptive parents. He could only guess how that had happened. “This has been a long time coming. I’m sure you know that.”

  Lee wagged his head. “I don’t want to see you boys hurt.”

  “Then don’t tell Mitch,” Jesse said. “I’ll protect my little brother for as long as I can. But if my mother took that baby…”

  Lee looked away. “For Daisy’s sake I pray Angela really is alive and that your mother had nothing to do with taking her.”

  Jesse studied his father, seeing something that he’d missed years ago. Lee’s feelings for Daisy Dennison. How deep did they run? Jesse wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “You won’t say anything to Mitch about this?” he asked his father.

  Lee looked up in surprise. “And have Charity find out? It would be on the front page of her paper by tomorrow.” He smiled as if admiring her tenacity, the same tenacity that had her now about to marry Mitch. “No matter what you find out, son, we’re a family. We’ll weather this storm just like we have all the others.”

  Jesse nodded, wishing he could believe that. “Tell your lawyer I’ll be contacting him.”

  Lee sighed and looked out into the darkness. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  As Jesse walked back to his bike, a few white clouds cruised by over the tops of the trees obscuring the stars and moon, darkening the night to as black as his mood. Maggie was out there somewhere. He could feel it. Fate had made their paths cross. But maybe not for the reason he’d originally thought. Or desperately wanted.

  Either way, she needed him. And he doubted she realized it. He just hoped he could find her before it was too late.

  As he reached to start the bike, he felt the damned cell phone vibrate in his pocket.

  “Jesse!” Daisy Dennison cried the moment he answered the phone. “Someone has broken into Dennison Ducks. The thief is still there. The new production manager is on the other line calling from her cell phone outside the plant watching it happening right now. Someone’s in Wade’s office with a flashlight going through the files!”

  “I’m on my way.” Jesse snapped off the phone and headed the bike toward Dennison Ducks already pretty sure he knew who the thief was and what she was looking for.

  Chapter Nine

  Maggie had just dropped through the air vent into the second-story office section of Dennison Ducks, when she heard it. The soft scuff of a shoe on the co
ncrete first floor below her.

  She froze, listening. Had she only imagined it? She waited, heard nothing, then snapped on the small flashlight and shone it around the office.

  Quickly and quietly she moved past the secretary’s desk to Wade Dennison’s office. Her light caught on an eye gleaming from the corner. Her heart leaped to her throat, choking off her scream. She settled the flashlight beam on the eye, ready to run.

  A large duck, its plastic eye sparkling, looked back at her. She realized the room was full of ducks. Every size, shape and color stared down at her from a shelf that ran the entire circumference of the room.

  Hurriedly, she scanned the file cabinets, not sure exactly what she was looking for until she spotted the locked file drawer directly behind his desk. She moved soundlessly to the desk, picked up the letter opener and approached the file drawer.

  The lock was old, the cabinet handle dusty as if it hadn’t been opened for a while. She pried with the letter opener until the lock broke and, holding the same flashlight in her teeth, quietly slid open the drawer.

  That’s when she heard the sound again. Someone moving through the plant below her. A stair creaked. Then another. Someone was coming up the steps to the office.

  Deputy Jesse Tanner? Had someone spotted the light in the office and called the cops?

  There was only one file in the drawer. The rest of the space was covered in dust. She grabbed the file, stuffed it into her jacket, turned off the flashlight and not bothering to close the drawer, retraced her steps quietly across the room.

  She could hear someone coming up the steps now, see the faint glow of a penlight. She reached out in the dark, located the desk and climbed up onto it. Any moment the person would enter the office.

  She froze, immobilized with fear, as she caught a whiff of the same odor she’d smelled on the pier right before Blackmore had tried to kill her.

  He was almost to the top of the stairs. Maggie pulled herself up into the vent and moved fast, no longer afraid of making noise. She could hear the thunder of running footsteps across the office, the rattle of the vent grate as it was banged aside.

  In an instant she was on the roof and racing across to the pine tree she’d climbed for access. She scrambled down through the limbs afraid someone would be waiting for her at the bottom.

  But once on the ground, no one appeared out of the darkness.

  She leaped onto her bike, started it quickly, taking off down the road at full speed. She hadn’t gone far when she saw the headlight of the other bike. It came roaring up the hill, the headlight catching her broadside in its sights.

  JESSE WAS almost to the decoy plant when he spotted the single light coming out. A biker. Moving fast.

  In his headlight he saw the gleam of the biker’s helmet, recognized both it and the bike as she turned to look in his direction. First the newspaper and now Dennison Ducks.

  She saw him, turned hard to the right, throwing up gravel as she took a short cut across the ditch and flew up onto the dirt road headed away from town.

  He went after her, telling himself she couldn’t outrun him on this narrow rutted dirt road that wound through the mountains. She didn’t know the road as well as he did. Nor could she take the familiar curves the way he could—and had on many occasions in his youth.

  But then he’d forgotten that he wasn’t dealing with just any woman. Maggie had been racing bikes since she was a girl. She stayed ahead of him no matter how hard he tried to catch her, hugging the corners, riding high on the road and staying in the lead.

  Damn. He feared she would kill herself trying to get away from him and yet he had to catch her. He couldn’t let her get away from him. Not again.

  They roared through the darkness, the dense forest rushing by, the road a winding ribbon of rutted dirt track.

  He realized that the dirt road would soon connect to the main highway. The way she was riding and given the capabilities of her bike she’d outrun him once she hit pavement again.

  He stayed right with her but just as he’d known once she roared up onto the highway she was gone, leaving his Harley in the dust.

  He stopped, tore off his helmet and swore as the last red glow of her taillight faded in the distance. That woman could ride, but he’d known that about her.

  He wondered, as he stared after her down the highway into the darkness, what else he would learn about Maggie Randolph before this was over—and that’s what had him worried.

  He shifted the cycle into gear and headed back toward Dennison Ducks. He still had to deal with Daisy before the night was over. But somewhere out there in the forest was a biker with a personal interest in Angela Dennison’s kidnapping. A biker with a bunch of money in a saddlebag and a West Seattle homicide detective after her.

  And he had no way to help her. Even a woman as capable as Maggie Randolph might be in more trouble than she could handle. He wondered when he’d see her again.

  Not soon enough to suit him.

  MAGGIE TOOK a series of back roads she’d memorized from the old logging road maps, putting as much distance as she could between her and the deputy. And the man who’d been in the decoy plant with her tonight.

  Detective Blackmore wasn’t just in Timber Falls. He’d been at Dennison Ducks. He’d been that close. Had he followed her to the decoy plant? Or had he just known that’s where she would show up?

  Her heart was still pounding. She’d smelled him. That same rank smell she’d caught on the pier just before he fired at her and she’d rolled off the pier with Norman’s dead body and splashed down into the churning surf.

  And right behind the killer had been Deputy Jesse Tanner. She’d known the moment she saw the single headlight who it was. She’d seen his bike in the garage, an old Harley. Had Detective Blackmore called him? Or had someone else?

  She hadn’t been sure she could outrun Jesse. It had been close until she reached the highway and opened her bike up.

  Now she pulled over to the side of the logging road, shaken and weak from the fear. She shut off the engine to listen. The silence engulfed her like the darkness. She breathed in the night air and let it out slowly. She was safe. For the moment.

  But now both Blackmore and the deputy knew she’d been at Dennison Ducks. Maybe even knew it had been her at the newspaper. Jesse Tanner was smart enough to put it together given her mode of entry into the buildings.

  Detective Blackmore must have called the deputy to help him capture her under the pretense of taking her back to Seattle. And wouldn’t Deputy Jesse Tanner have to give her over to Blackmore? Wasn’t that the way the law worked?

  Her heart rate began to slow. And she felt a stab of regret that Jesse hadn’t caught her. That she hadn’t let him catch her. By now she would know one way or the other if Blackmore had gotten to the deputy.

  That kind of thinking could get her killed, she reminded herself.

  So why did her instincts tell her Deputy Jesse Tanner could be trusted? And with more than her life. Or maybe she just wanted to believe that because she liked him. She smiled at that understatement.

  JESSE FOUND Daisy’s new production manager waiting outside the back door at Dennison Ducks.

  He parked his bike and walked toward the woman, surprised in more ways than one. He’d heard Daisy was taking over the running of the decoy factory now that Wade was in jail, but as far as he knew there’d been no announcement of a new production manager since Bud Farnsworth had been killed there in October.

  Since Daisy had never shown any interest in Dennison Ducks—other than spending the income from it—Jesse, like the rest of the town, wasn’t sure what to expect from her as far as management skills.

  “You must be Deputy Tanner,” the woman said extending a hand. “Mrs. Dennison told me to wait for you here. I’m Frances Sanders, the new production manager.”

  Frances was tall and blond in her late fifties with a kind face and a strong grip.

  Jesse shook her hand, trying hard to hide his surprise since
he knew damned well that Wade would never have hired a woman for the position.

  “You expected a man,” Frances said with a smile. “Don’t let my gender fool you. I know what I’m doing. My father was a decoy carver. I grew up in the business.”

  “Didn’t mean to infer otherwise,” he said and returned her smile. “You’re just a lot different from the last production manager.”

  “I should hope so from what I’ve heard about him,” she said smoothly, then looked toward the plant. “I came by to pick up some reports and saw a flashlight beam bobbing around inside the main plant and called Mrs. Dennison at once. A few minutes later, I saw the second flashlight.”

  “Second flashlight?” he asked in surprise.

  She nodded. “There was definitely two of them. One on the lower floor, the second upstairs in Mrs. Dennison’s office.”

  Mrs. Dennison’s office? Formerly Wade’s office.

  “I got a glimpse of both of them as they were fleeing. The one who took off over the roof was small and slim, a woman I think. The other was definitely a man, larger.”

  Could he be wrong about Maggie? “They were together?”

  She shook her head. “I got the impression the man was chasing the woman. She took off on a motorcycle, but you know that since I heard you go after her.”

  He smiled, impressed. “And the man?”

  “Just caught a glimpse of him going through the trees.” She pointed in the opposite direction. “Then I heard the sound of an engine. Truck, I’d say. Can’t be sure, it was too far away.”

  He nodded. “Nice job. Have you been inside yet?”

  “I waited for you. I didn’t want to destroy any evidence.”

  “Let’s take a look.” And he stood back while she opened the door.

  It didn’t take him long to find where someone had broken in through a window at the back. Maggie had come in through an air vent via the roof same as she had at the newspaper office. He’d known she hadn’t come to steal decoys so finding what she’d been after was a no-brainer.